A mood ring? Talking Obama’s press conference on Hardball

I got into a very brief tangle with my old friend and former Examiner colleague Chris Matthews last night. Not always the best idea when you’re on Chris’ turf, “Hardball.” And Chris will always have more political detail in his brain than most people, certainly more than I do, so I couldn’t follow Sean Connery’s advice in “The Untouchables“: if they have a knife, you better have a gun.

But he was a little touchy over my offhand ribbing about the East Coast centricity of the discussion at the moment. The topic was New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, his image and his public maneuvering. Chris asked me what I thought. What I actually think is that Mr. Cuomo is just following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer (well, maybe not all the footsteps) in aggressively going after Wall Street bad guys, with the side benefit of boosting his visibility and prospects for higher office.

What I actually said was that Chris and MSNBC’s political analyst, Lawrence O’Donnell, were obsessing about East Coast politics. Torrent from Chris followed, about how everything happens in DC and something about “mood ring” San Francisco.

But the moment passed and I managed to get away somewhat better off than Jim Cramer did on “The Daily Show.” I had a soft spot in my heart for Chris long before then but he let me prattle when he could have elbowed me right off the air.

The other thing I didn’t get to say was about Mr. Obama’s press conference: I’ve never seen anyone so happy to be asked about drug wars in Mexico.